It is frequently necessary commonly to connect a plurality of conductors and a wide variety of connecting devices are available for that purpose For example, it is common practice to use a commoning block which has contact sites that are adapted to receive terminals on the ends of the conductors which are to be commonly connected. Most of the connecting devices of the commoning block type require that all of the terminals which are connected to the block be of the same configuration and such devices are incapable of accepting different types of electrical contact members.
Many conventional duplex outlets used with 110 volt wires employ bus bars to interconnect both duplex sockets to the wiring. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,387,949 and U.S. Pat. No. 4,479,692 show duplex receptacle outlets used with standard three wire undercarpet flat power cable containing hot, neutral and ground conductors. U.S. Pat. No. 4,589,715 discloses an electrical connector kit for making alternate interconnection to the five wire flat undercarpet power cable. Bus bars are also used in conventional pre-wired electrical A/C outlet strips which employ bus bars to make a number of interconnections. For example, a single bus bar may include four interconnection sites for one conductor in a conventional pre-wired strip and the bus bar may be attached to a switch by disconnectable tab receptacles. However, these conventional bus bars are not suitable for making a number of interconnections to closely spaced conductors, such as wires in a ribbon cable, because the bus bars are relatively large and the contacts used to make the interconnections are relatively bulky. For example, the conductors in flat undercarpet cable are much wider than wires capable of carrying equivalent currents. Therefore, wider contacts can be employed for both input and output from the bus bar. Use of these bus bar configurations for round wires in ribbon cables would mean that the centerline spacing between conductors must be greater than necessary for electrical distribution requirements, or would require that the centerline spacing be changed at cable locations where an outlet or a tap is to be placed. Furthermore, these conventional configurations are not suitable for use with signal wires, which are smaller and can be placed on even closer centerline spacings.